Couple of months ago, I did see the book named ‘A Promise is a Promise’ written by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer - I was buying his another book ‘Excuses Begone!’. After reading ‘Excuses Begone’ and watching his feature film ‘The Shift’, I couldn’t stop buying the book ‘A Promise is a Promise’.

Let me clarify, this is not  a book review. This note is to tell about a story of uncondtional love. If you loved Anne Frank, you would also love Edwarda O’Bara.

See an excerpt from the website www.edwardaobara.com - “Edwarda O’Bara was a vivacious sixteen-year-old and a mild diabetic. During the early morning hours of January 3rd, 1970, Edwarda woke up shaking and in great pain because the oral form of insulin she had been taking wasn’t reaching her blood stream. Edwarda was rushed to the hospital emergency room and as she lay in her hospital bed sliding in and out of consciousness she turned to her mother Kaye and said, “Promise you won’t leave me, will you, Mommy?” Kaye looked at her frightened daughter and said, “Of course not, I would never leave you, darling, I promise. And a promise is a promise!” Those were the last words that were exchanged before Edwarda quietly slipped into a diabetic coma”

The website continued…. “For the past 39 years, Edwarda has lived her life in a coma, and Kaye has lived her promise of never leaving her daughter’s side. Kaye has kept a vigil at Edwarda’s bedside, caring for her every two hours, twenty-four hours a day, for the past 38 years! She has maintained this grueling pace and during these 38 years has not slept for more than 90 minutes at a time. As a devoted mother, Kaye chose not to institutionalize Edwarda, but rather to care for her at home and assume the tremendous financial burden that accompanies personally caring for a comatose child“ 

Can you just imagine the situation? 39 years!! This indeed is a story of inspiration. You should read the full story eaither in the book ‘A Promise is a Promise’ or the website.

The website continued… “Unfortunately, Kaye passed away March 7th 2008 and now her younger daughter Colleen cares for her sister Edwarda till she wakes up. HOPE NEVER DIES”

Only death could have stopped the loving mother from keeping her promise. I hope the message which Dr. Wayne, Kaye and Edwarda gave to me this New Year is the best message I got, “to love unconditionally”.

Let me also convey my best regards to the Leadership Village children like Maneesha, Ramsheena and many others who have written beautiful blogs. We hope to see more like this… Let the new year be a year of inspiration, unconditional love and care.

In love and light, 

 Mohammad Nibras.

Thanks Sangeeth for your message about the successful Young Leadership Program sponsored by Microsoft.

It is pleasing to see LeadCap’s values-in-action in making space and time available to nurture India’s leaders of the future, even if they may not have seen themselves as leaders prior to the camp as your message suggests….

The 21 Microsoft Student partners (some of them, the brightest youngsters that I have ever met), who attended the LeadCap YLP boot camp walked in with a clear focus on technology. However, we would like to believe from their excitement that they walked out with a bigger picture of what they could do with this technological edge  - for their institution, for their society and for their nation. The first day set the basics right - on what is leadership, what is the purpose of YLP and what are the expectations out of them. At the same time, we did face some amount of skepticism on that day- mainly on why the MSPs should add one more thing to their workload, and even on why they should be leaders - when all they should really be focusing is a job.

However, the second day was a magical turn around. The same people who expressed skepticism, came back renewed. Probably, the homework session did them good, helping them internalize learnings. They could suddenly grasp the bigger picture, and why they should be utilizing a part of their energy to nurture more people and for a bigger impact on the nation. They had found most of the answers themselves - on how they would proceed, and in fact addressed some of the critical management problems of intrinsic motivation, accountability etc. They were truly talking the leader’s language - of finding solutions than posing problems. Especially, I am glad with the support that our ‘Leadership Village’ initiative and online action networking platform received. I can already see that a lot of activities are already happening, where they have set up LIVE groups to set goals and charter the progress.

The momentum is on. We are on track. At the same time, this would not have possible with out the help of those who supported us in this journey - Microsoft, Dr.Richard Norris, Dr.Ram Raghavan, Prof.Rajeev Gowda, Suhas Gopinath.

Your program demonstrates the power of small ‘l’ leadership, that is, when individuals take on the responsibility for their own learning, living and life opportunities.  Small ‘l’ leadership is about knowing ourselves as well as possible and this includes being mindful of our own values, strengths and weaknesses and how we like to learn and interact with people etc.  Indeed, it is nigh on impossible to be a capital “L” leader without this commitment and it will be fascinating to track where these young leaders end up and what they do with their lives.   

Another way to look at this is through Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs and the pursuit of self-actualisation as the aspiration for us all with an eye towards transcendence.  There is much to teach the West on these matters from the long and rich Indian traditions too.  Here are some of the characteristics of self actualisation:

• creative, inventive and original;

• keen sense of reality

• see problems in terms of challenges and situations requiring solutions

• need for privacy and comfortable being alone

• reliant on own experiences and judgement

• not susceptible to social pressures

• democratic, fair and non-discriminating

• socially compassionate - possessing humanity 

• accepting others as they are

• comfortable with oneself

• a few close intimate friends rather than many surface relationships

• sense of humour directed at oneself or the human condition, rather than at the expense of others

• spontaneous and natural - true to oneself, rather than being how others want

• excited and interested in everything, even ordinary things

• seek peak experiences that leave a lasting impression

In closing, what are your thoughts on small ‘l’ leadership and the paradox it creates?  The more selfish we are to take the time to know ourselves better the more other-centred we tend to become!!

Guest Blogger
Heather Davis
Centre for Leadership Excellence, Australia

August 2009

Thank you Sangeeth for inviting me to be a guest blogger at LeadCap.org.  It is clear that we have much in common and share in bold and positive visions for leadership 2.0!  I’m very pleased to now be involved with the important work of LeadCap.   

In his most recent blog at Forbes.com Sangeeth talked about “the magic potion of hard power mixed with soft emotion” and gives examples of what perhaps can best be described as PDHs (public displays of humanity) by American presidents…He received mix reactions to this post but it resonated very much with my own work.  One of the reasons for the mixed emotions is the underlying worldview of the readers.

My comments to Sangeeth’s blog:

I really like this post and it resonates so well with my own work and research too. It seems on balance that people who appreciate that other-centredness, relationships and ’soft’ skills are so important now are the same people who have a worldview that is relevant for the knowledge era. Those who do not are generally deriving their values and worldview from the archaic industrial era.

One of the reasons I’m calling my work and research ‘leadership literacies’ is because I’ve come to realize that language (and in particular metaphors) is an important way to surface people’s underlying (and often unexamined) values. I also think that some translation is needed between the two worldviews, just as much as translation between foreign languages. Your example is a great case in point in that the gestures you have described by these two Presidents could be construed as ‘weak’ or ’strong’ depending on the underlying worldview.

Perhaps this is our role–that of translators between the two worldviews. I am not in favor of oppositional language because I don’t think the planet has the luxury of waiting, we need to be bringing together these worldviews and all be working together on the bigger issues.

I’ve written about oppositional language etc in a paper I’m giving at the Thinking Conference in Malaysia in June. The last para of the conclusion is relevant to your post:

It was also argued that oppositional language and the pitting of one deeply held worldview against another will not lead to resolving the underlying problems of the world or the workplace. Rather, space for conversations to surface underlying assumptions is required in order to find ways of integrating our economic and social systems in every layer of society, including the workplace. Perkins’s language of peace metaphor confirms that that there are always other lenses to view the world through, not just the one that hegemony prefers and privileges.

Since responding to Sangeeth’s blog another example where translation between worldviews may be required was given by Katherine Bell recently in her HBR blog about empathy (see Empathy: not such a soft skill).  Again, depending on your worldview empathy, like many of the ’soft’ skills, may be seen as ‘weak’ to some and ’strong’ to others.

Guest Blogger
Heather Davis
Centre for Leadership Excellence, Australia

May 2009

We had a great session “story of George”

In this session we learn about George, a 10th standard student from middle class family ,who feels shy every time and never tried to look up at others and no inkling of what leadership is all about. George had nothing that could not make him a leader even he did not attend any leadership classes, but only thing, he had a bold decision and undertook his journey and remained opened and he learnt a lot and finally he recommended to position of responsibility in a youth organization

And one thing i need to tell that George is inspired by the great leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Thomas Alva Edison, which we have learn a lot , these leaders also suffered a lot in the beginning as of we already know about them, Thomas Alva Edison failed 1000 times and finally he invented Bulb and he said he found 1000 ways to which we cant invent bulb , by this we can understand how he converted the failure to victory. this is an small example of these leaders.

What i learn from this session is, i have to learn how to build my confidence and how to reduce my inferiority complex, and how to come up in life. one day I want to prove that a leader, and i will a part in “Building a nation of leaders”

Thanks and regards
Ravindra